The Incredible Shrinking Meal

By DONNA ST. GEORGE

Published: April 16, 1997

ONCE there was the lunch hour. Now there is the lunch squeeze: the midday mealtime interlude that has been rushed, scaled down and even eliminated as workers like Susan Julbe juggle the demands of office and home.

Mrs. Julbe, a business manager for National Public Radio in Washington, clocks her lunch break at ''about seven minutes'' -- the time it takes to microwave a frozen entree in the office kitchen and bring it back to her desk.

She eats while she works, she said, having just finished a lunch of Healthy Choice chicken cacciatore, because ''it gives me that extra hour in my day.''

Though Mrs. Julbe may sound extreme, she is part of a trend that has changed restaurant menus, inspired a successful line of convenience foods and helped create a boom in takeout eating and corporate catering.

A growing number of Americans view the lunch hour of old as a luxury that no longer fits into a world of downsized businesses, heavier workloads and time-pressed families with two working parents.

When the National Restaurant Association polled workers in late 1996, for example, nearly 40 percent reported that they did not take a real lunch break. Forty-five percent said they had less time for lunch than before.

And in two other recent surveys, the American lunch ''hour'' measured up to about half its billing: 29 minutes in one survey and 36 minutes in the other.

''Lunch is not the big thing that it once was,'' said Mildred Culp, a Seattle workplace consultant. ''People, if not overwhelmed, are at least swamped, so they are looking to use their time more efficiently.''

Dr. Culp added that the social aspects of lunch have changed for many workers. ''People are now communicating by E-mail,'' she said. ''They don't have to get together to chitchat and be friendly.''

Underlying the squeeze on lunch are a string of other 1990's realities.

For Rich Bentley, the lunch hour fell apart after the birth of his son, Kyle, eight months ago. Both Mr. Bentley and his wife work full time. And once their son was in day care, their schedules had to be arranged around Kyle's.

''The old days of leisurely lunches and workouts are gone,'' said Mr. Bentley, an administrator at the State University Health Science Center at Brooklyn, who organizes his workday so that he can leave by 5 P.M. and pick up his son from day care on time.

Now, lunch has shrunk from a 60-minute break to a fast bite at a hospital cafeteria or neighborhood takeout counter. ''I call it a 15-minute wolfing session,'' Mr. Bentley said.

Many lunchers, feeling such pressures, skip the noon meal altogether.

Lunch is, in fact, the most missed meal -- not breakfast, as many people believe, said Harry Balzer, a vice president of the NPD Group, a consumer research organization in Rosemont, Ill., that tracks eating trends.

Last year, the average American older than 18 skipped lunch 66 times, compared with 56 times in 1984, the first year for which it has data.

But to Mr. Balzer, that fact is not nearly so striking as this one: more and more Americans are joining the brown-bag brigade. Some 43 percent of men and 34 percent of women brought lunch from home at least once every two weeks in 1996, up about a third since 1987.

''It's a trend, there is no question about that,'' Mr. Balzer said. ''In my way of thinking, it's because there is no easier or cheaper meal you can have than the meal you have carried from your house and that is sitting 10 feet away from you whenever you want.''

The brown-bag trend is well known to food manufacturers, who have created shelves of new products for packing in paper bags and briefcases: items likes Oscar Mayer Lunchables and Starkist Charlie's Lunch Kit.

The lunch crunch of the 90's, which is especially evident among office workers, is well recognized by restaurateurs, who have expanded takeout operations and stepped up corporate catering -- so that workers will not have to be away from their offices long, if at all.

In the 1980's, ''people were willing and able to wait half an hour for a seat,'' said Peter Wyss of Restaurant Associates, which owns Tropica, Cafe Centro and Naples in the MetLife Building in midtown Manhattan, as well as takeout restaurants. ''You don't see this anymore anywhere in midtown Manhattan,'' he added.

In Chicago, Karen Ryan may typify the worker who once went out to lunch but now eats takeout at her desk. Just five years ago, she and colleagues felt relaxed enough about their jobs to lunch regularly at sitdown restaurants.

''Now, people catch it when they can -- and there's no such thing as a lunch hour,'' said Ms. Ryan, an account representative at J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency. ''There are never enough hours in the day to get things done.''

The dwindling lunch hour, however, is not only a result of schedule overload. For some, skimping on lunch is a way of expanding time for personal activities. For example, Mr. Wyss said lunch hours in his restaurants had slowed down on Fridays as customers tried to wrap up their workweeks in four and a half days.